 Early Times Report
JAMMU, Jan 18: Harsh Dev Singh, Chairman NPP today called upon the ex-ministers, legislators and bureaucrats to come clean on the issue of encroachments before harassing or initiating eviction proceedings against poor, hapless, un-influential villagers, nomads, and other homeless people.
Singh said that the selective action against poor and marginalized sections in the name of illegal encroachments, to the exclusion of privileged classes, was highly reprehensible. Referring to the dismantling and bull dozing of habitations of Gujjar Bakarwals by the JDA recently, he questioned as to how and why the palatial mansions constructed on state and forest land by politicians and top bureaucrats had been granted impunity from legal and departmental action.
“Hundreds of poor families putting up in the said shelters for as long as six to seven decades were being dispossessed and their habitations dismantled by those government functionaries who had contrarily helped the influential by all means to raise palatial bungalows on state, municipal, JDA, forests and even on army lands,” said Singh while addressing a gathering of Gujjars and Bakarwals in Roop Nagar area who were on protest dharna against the selective action of eviction being taken against them by the govt.
Singh dared the government to retrieve the forest land from the ex-ministers, MLAs, MLCs and other bureaucrats in areas like Bhatindi, Sunjwan, Chowadi, Nagrota, Bajalta, etc in the vicinity of Jammu city.
He said that several thousands of Kanals of forest land had been encroached by politicians and their cronies in the said areas mostly belonging to other districts and Kashmir division and who had raised huge residential and commercial complexes in collusion with the functionaries of forest department with the forest officers reportedly having provided even financial assistance for raising such constructions |
